The Tunnel's End Light Is Dim
Mr. Rove, meet Mr. Rasputin. He started as a simple charlatan and religious advisor who has been called delusional, sociopathic, puppet-master and all sorts of other mean labels with some justification. Sadly you can't meet the man, because he's dead. Also, if there is reincarnation he is obviously one of your past lives making a meeting impossible. Will today's Russian noblemen, reincarnated as the neo-cons running this country give you the same treatment they did nearly 90 years ago? They probably don't think they can get away with murder to support the monarchy again, but my friend, how far do you think they are from hanging you out to dry?
The neoconservative movement appears to be shattering under it's own weight. Their general hate of those promoting individual freedoms, holding corporations accountable, or shining the light on corruption is having trouble sustaining itself. The innate fear and greed they live by and promote is not being universally slaked. When raping a country, or even the whole world, there just isn't enough to go around anymore. So, the jackals are starting to fight amongst themselves.
Are the religious zealots who feel slighted by the leadership because we haven't become enough of a church state to slake their thirst for persecuting non-believers likely to rally around the likes of DeLay, Frist, Rove, and company who promised them a golden age of religious tyranny? How about the fiscal conservatives who are not seeing poor people starve to death as fast as they'd hoped, yet have seen the biggest climb in national debt in the history of the country, even after accounting for inflation? How about big corporations who believed they had bought preferential treatment only to get the occasional table scrap from the lucky insiders like Halliburton? The racists who embraced the promises of gutting equal opportunity measures can't be satisfied either. What I would consider moving dangerously far backwards, is looked at by these people as a nearly complete lack of progress.
I'm addressing the fringe groups in this line of thought for two interwoven reasons. The group in power at the moment relies on fanatics, and has often made contradictory promises to different groups. Secondly, they have been wildly successful in creating more fanatics who are single issue voters. It seems the creation and lip service to fanatics has been the basis of their rise to hegemony.
I watched the right's frenetic embrace of racism while I lived in the south, as the democrats finally gave up their passive support of sustaining racism in the south, turning the south into a republican stronghold. To hold onto the moderate folks the GOP harped on the democrats history of supporting racism in the south, which was both true and absolutely meaningless today. Watch the conservatives and you'll see nearly everything they accuse their enemies of doing is patently false, and something they are deeply mired in themselves.
Coming back the northwest I saw the churches become a hundred times more politicized than anything I've seen in my short 48 years. The issue of abortion was basically created, nurtured and promoted along side increased homophobia to get two large self-righteous groups intent on controlling and/or holding down people they disagree with or hold in fear and contempt.
Appealing to the darker side of human nature has been amazingly successful, but that dark side is notoriously intolerant. The disparate fanatics who have been courted and abandoned are starting to feel betrayed. I've called the republicans the ice party in the past, "CowardICE, avarICE, and prejudICE." All three were needed in copious quantities from the masses to support attacking Iraq, passing the patriot act, rolling back social service, increasing corporate handouts, and so on. I won't let America off the hook by saying we're ignorant, because it has been willful ignorance. Personal spin control, so to speak, by ignoring what we don't want to hear. We are culpable, and I worry we will be held accountable in very disturbing ways.
The little fractures we're seeing in the pseudo-conservative facade are a hopeful sign, and I must admit I am excited by it. There are moral conservatives, probably in the majority, and these real-conservatives may retake the reins of the GOP. It won't be instant. It wasn't until many years after McCarthy was discredited for going after the U.S. Army when they refused to promote one of his cronies (the gay lover of Roy Cohn) in 1954 the political climate which bore is name, McCarthyism, was considered to be over. He studiously drank himself to death in 1957, and the official end of McCarthyism is generally considered to have been 1969 (when HUAC was renamed) or 1975 (when it was dissolved). Will the current era die any faster? Who will it be named after? I believe that like the darkness McCarthyism brought us, we won't fully recover the true spirit, beauty, and liberty our country was founded upon and was sacrificed during the fear fests. Though I do believe we'll once again get somewhat closer to a healthy balance.
The neoconservative movement appears to be shattering under it's own weight. Their general hate of those promoting individual freedoms, holding corporations accountable, or shining the light on corruption is having trouble sustaining itself. The innate fear and greed they live by and promote is not being universally slaked. When raping a country, or even the whole world, there just isn't enough to go around anymore. So, the jackals are starting to fight amongst themselves.
Are the religious zealots who feel slighted by the leadership because we haven't become enough of a church state to slake their thirst for persecuting non-believers likely to rally around the likes of DeLay, Frist, Rove, and company who promised them a golden age of religious tyranny? How about the fiscal conservatives who are not seeing poor people starve to death as fast as they'd hoped, yet have seen the biggest climb in national debt in the history of the country, even after accounting for inflation? How about big corporations who believed they had bought preferential treatment only to get the occasional table scrap from the lucky insiders like Halliburton? The racists who embraced the promises of gutting equal opportunity measures can't be satisfied either. What I would consider moving dangerously far backwards, is looked at by these people as a nearly complete lack of progress.
I'm addressing the fringe groups in this line of thought for two interwoven reasons. The group in power at the moment relies on fanatics, and has often made contradictory promises to different groups. Secondly, they have been wildly successful in creating more fanatics who are single issue voters. It seems the creation and lip service to fanatics has been the basis of their rise to hegemony.
I watched the right's frenetic embrace of racism while I lived in the south, as the democrats finally gave up their passive support of sustaining racism in the south, turning the south into a republican stronghold. To hold onto the moderate folks the GOP harped on the democrats history of supporting racism in the south, which was both true and absolutely meaningless today. Watch the conservatives and you'll see nearly everything they accuse their enemies of doing is patently false, and something they are deeply mired in themselves.
Coming back the northwest I saw the churches become a hundred times more politicized than anything I've seen in my short 48 years. The issue of abortion was basically created, nurtured and promoted along side increased homophobia to get two large self-righteous groups intent on controlling and/or holding down people they disagree with or hold in fear and contempt.
Appealing to the darker side of human nature has been amazingly successful, but that dark side is notoriously intolerant. The disparate fanatics who have been courted and abandoned are starting to feel betrayed. I've called the republicans the ice party in the past, "CowardICE, avarICE, and prejudICE." All three were needed in copious quantities from the masses to support attacking Iraq, passing the patriot act, rolling back social service, increasing corporate handouts, and so on. I won't let America off the hook by saying we're ignorant, because it has been willful ignorance. Personal spin control, so to speak, by ignoring what we don't want to hear. We are culpable, and I worry we will be held accountable in very disturbing ways.
The little fractures we're seeing in the pseudo-conservative facade are a hopeful sign, and I must admit I am excited by it. There are moral conservatives, probably in the majority, and these real-conservatives may retake the reins of the GOP. It won't be instant. It wasn't until many years after McCarthy was discredited for going after the U.S. Army when they refused to promote one of his cronies (the gay lover of Roy Cohn) in 1954 the political climate which bore is name, McCarthyism, was considered to be over. He studiously drank himself to death in 1957, and the official end of McCarthyism is generally considered to have been 1969 (when HUAC was renamed) or 1975 (when it was dissolved). Will the current era die any faster? Who will it be named after? I believe that like the darkness McCarthyism brought us, we won't fully recover the true spirit, beauty, and liberty our country was founded upon and was sacrificed during the fear fests. Though I do believe we'll once again get somewhat closer to a healthy balance.
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